Insights from an interview by Cole with Dr Yousef AlKhoury, Bethlehem Bible College, Bethlehem, Palestine.

I recently interviewed Dr Yousef AlKhoury, a Palestinian theologian from Gaza and academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College. His family remains in Gaza City where they’ve served the community at St Porphyrius Church for over 900 years.

When we spoke earlier this month, he told me his parents and sister had returned home during the brief ceasefire in January, after months sheltering in St Porphyrius church. A week later, they were back in the church. Israel's evacuation leaflets and deadly pledge to strike "Gaza's terror towers" had sent families fleeing into the streets with nothing; later salvaging whatever they’re able. Many remain on the streets, and hundreds of thousands are fleeing south again to ever-shrinking ‘safe zones’ which Israel still targets - nowhere is safe. Israel now controls over 75% of the strip.

In January, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated 92% of homes in the Gaza Strip had been damaged or destroyed by Israel, with 90% of civilians displaced. Nine months later Israeli forces continue their destruction, simultaneously this confirmed the first famine in Gaza.

Despite expulsion orders, the Catholic and Orthodox communities have committed to stay. Yousef calls his mother whenever there is a connection. She tells me,

"I'm sick of being displaced, I'm sick of this situation, I'd prefer to die rather than being displaced. I don't want to live the humiliation, the slow death of displacement."

In response to global inaction, Yousef says he "cannot comprehend how people are tolerating such brutality from the Israeli regime". Churches especially.

We delved into his childhood in Gaza. Christians hold intimate friendships with their Muslim neighbours, family bonds formed through warm hospitality, mothers wet-nursing each other's children, exchanging meals and sharing milestones. Persecution, he clarifies, was always from Israel - not his Muslim neighbours. But church attitudes in the West have severely damaged their Christian witness.

He shares the trauma of Israeli aggression during the first Palestinian uprising where life was defined by checkpoints, military raids, and airstrikes – Israel imposed a total blockade on al-Shati refugee camp, so Gazan families would bake bread and throw it over the walls to prevent residents starving.

Today the starvation continues. Under Israeli blockade, Yousef's family are making bread from animal feed. His parents both rely on medication which ran out long ago. His nieces and nephews have never known safety; even playing on the beach has been a death trap for years (YouTube: 3 min 41 sec, 18 July 2014).

He recounts his grandmother’s expulsion from Jaffa city to Gaza in 1948, during Israel's establishment - 80% of Gaza are refugees who still await the right to return to their homes almost eight decades later. 

Israel's campaign in Gaza has been labelled a Genocide by Amnesty International (Dec 2024), Human Rights Watch (Dec 2024), Al Haq (May 2025), B’Tselem, Adalah (April 2024), Defence for Children International - Palestine, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Dec 2024), 800 Genocide Scholars (Oct 2023), International Association of Genocide Scholars (Aug 2025), and most recently the United Nations. With numerous accounts from independent medical and aid workers on the ground, there remains no doubt that this is the reality.

Last week we saw a courageous response from 10 clergy across the motu: five of whom were trespassed for staging a pray in at Simeon Brown's office; and five more chained themselves outside Nicola Willis' office for 32 hours prayerfully calling for targeted economic sanctions on Israel.

Hope is embodied in our actions. What a blessing that we are invited to participate in God's holy work, and prayerful peacemaking. We can pray for justice, sure, but we can also respond with creative, prayerful and persistent non-violent disruptions for peacemaking.

You can hear more from Dr. Yousef AlKhoury on Across the Divide podcast and Christ at the Checkpoint (June 2024 YouTube 34 min 3 sec). The interview will feature in the upcoming church video resource Beyond Pilgrimage (YouTube 1 min 39 sec).